Seducing the Regency Dom (3 page)

"Minx."
His voice was
slurred. "If you do that, I…" What he was going to say, she didn't find
out. With a groan that sounded tortured, Tony lifted his head, and moved back a
pace. He ran his hand through his hair, and mussed the once ordered curls. She
was pleased to see that his hand trembled. He wasn't as in control as he hoped
to portray.

"My lady, I believe I owe you an apology."

Susanna licked her lips.
"Really?
Such a pity, because I was going to thank you, and ask what
came next."
As an exit note, Susanna felt it couldn't be bettered. Except
she couldn't exit, and had to stand while a grin split his face and he laughed
out loud.

"
Xiao
Māo
, I wish I
hadn't made that promise. Any time you wish me to renege, please tell me. Not
necessarily offering for you, but perhaps a little dalliance? My candles are
ready and waiting to be used on a willing
body,
and my
cock is primed."

"No, I thank you and no. I," she
hesitated, "I am pure now, and at this moment have no intention of
altering that state."
At this moment
.
"My husband will want only me, and I
him."

"We could of course indulge in dalliances and
still leave you for all intents and purposes, pure."

She shook her head. "Sadly, the answer must
still be no. And what did you call me?"

"Xiao
Māo
? It's Chinese for
kitten
.
It's what I would call you if you let me be your Master."

He bowed and swept her out of the room, across the
back hallway, through the gardens and along the mews to her home.

Chapter
Three

"Mama, no more."
Tony waved his quizzing
glass in the direction of a gaggle of innocents who twitted and blushed every
time any eligible gentleman so much as glanced in their direction. His visitor
from that afternoon, he noted, was not one of them. Idly he wondered where she
was.

"What do you mean?" His mother pulled
herself up to her full height of around five foot three, and glared at him.
"Explain that remark."

Tony had never understood what 'to bristle' meant
until he returned from his travels and refused to fall in with his mother's wishes.
Now he understood full well. She did it magnificently.

As then.

"I mean, Mama, if you persist in parading this
procession of idiots who would bore me within five minutes, and shrivel my cock
and ballocks into indifferent passivity, I will travel once more." The
dowager's outraged hiss made him laugh.

"Mama, I love you dearly, but even you admitted
your marriage was an unhappy charade. Knowing my father, I can see why. I give
thanks every day I haven't inherited his traits and ideals. Apart from that, do
not try to tell me that Spencer Tarporley is merely a beau without benefits,
because I wouldn't believe you."

"Tony, I, you, Spen, oh where are my smelling
salts." She fluttered her hands around like a demented hen would flap its
wings. Tony pinched her chin and laughed. "Ah, Mama, be honest. Do you
really want me to have one of those chits to rule the roost?
To
be a role model for Emmaline and Charlotte?"

"Well, no, not really," Honoria Sentern
confessed. "However, Tony, I thought it best so you could do as you wanted
and not upset anyone."

Good grief, I hope
that doesn’t mean she knows of my proclivities? Or she has enjoyed such things...
Wrongly or not, the
thought of his mother as a subservient didn't sit well. She was his
mother
.
As for a
Dominant?
A less assertive person he had yet to meet. Tony was well
aware of the double standard he applied, but some things were best not even
thought about. But then, Spencer Tarporley did have somewhat of a reputation
when younger. Before Tony had time to assimilate those thoughts, his mother spoke
once more.

"I felt it best you marry, get the heir, and go
your own way without false promises. I know you better than you think, Tony,
and there are few women who would satisfy all you need.
Now,
no more.
I promise not to interfere, and will bring no more debutants to
your attention. However, I cannot answer for others."

He noticed she only mentioned debutants, not young
ladies almost at the back of the shelf. He let it slide as a matron in a
shocking purple and pink turban marched—there was no other word for it—in their
direction. She had a determined gleam in her eye and a blushing blonde in tow.

"I'm for the games room." He turned on his
heel and walked away, leaving his flustered mother to greet the newcomers. A
few games of dice and some brandy would go a long way to restore his
equanimity.

He didn’t get that far. Pinkerton, his Mama's butler,
stopped him as he exited the ballroom.

"Your grace?"

Tony sighed. That title was one he still thought of
as his father's, not his. However, his it was, and he had to get used to it.
Besides which, Pinkerton was a favorite. He'd dandied Tony on his knee as a
babe, patched his scrapes as a youth, and held his head as a drunken graduate.
Helped his sisters fend off unwanted admirers and been there for his mother when
his father died and Tony himself was trying to get a passage home. In short, Tony
would do anything for Pinkerton and vice versa.

"Why the long face, Pink?" Tony used the
nickname without thought. "Mama's ball is a success. The girls are dancing
their slippers off, and I'm about to go into hiding."

 
"I think
you'd better, your grace, though not here. There's one guest and her horse-faced
daughter loitering in the library, the Harrison woman and her giggling twins in
the small salon, and Endymion Stanley waiting in the games room, to beg for a
loan or ask you to take his daughter off his hands." He spoke in a
confident and confiding manner, and Tony appreciated it.

"Damnation. So where shall I go?
Home?"

Pinkerton chuckled. "Not if you want your mother
to continue to speak to you. May I suggest you let me announce supper? And
escort one of your Mama's cronies in? You could leave without shame afterward."

"Pink, you're a genius. Let's do it."
 
Tony punched the man's shoulder and grinned.
Pinkerton lived up to his nickname and a rosy hue spread over his face. He
hurried away in a stately manner, something Tony admired. He waited until the
gong sounded then retraced his steps. Once back inside the ballroom, he scanned
those people who hadn't yet left to join in the unseemly scramble for the best
seats in the supper room.

His sisters were both escorted by gentlemen he
expected to pay him a call before long, to ask permission to pay their addresses
to their chosen lady. It felt peculiar that he, as their brother would need to
adopt the role of his father and ask the gentlemen their prospects. Even though
he knew fine well what each man was worth. On the far side of the room, he saw
a particular crony of his mother’s, one he liked. Lady Hesketh was plump,
good-natured and good company. She told a bawdy sally without batting an eyelid,
and appreciated a risqué joke.

So far she was alone, and Tony decided to act before
his mother did her ‘sweeping all before her’ act and took Lady Hesketh into the
supper room along with the other loiterers. He strode toward her, his eyes
fixed on his goal and barely acknowledging anyone except with the briefest of
salutes. He wasn't going to be foiled now.

"Ah, Tony."
Her ladyship beamed
and gave him her hand to kiss. "Why are you over here and not with those
young simpering idiots?"

Her words were so similar to his thoughts, he
chuckled. "I prefer you, and your
non
simpering,
non idiocy. May I escort you to supper?"

She stared at him, and as ever, Tony thought her
eyes twinkled and saw deep into his soul. It never bothered him. He liked the
woman, and would never do anything to upset her.

"Well now, how nice. But this time, dear boy,
I'm going to have to refuse you. I'm waiting for that old fool Rotherhythe to
come out of the card room and escort me. He lost at dice and this is his
fate." She bellowed with laughter and her overlarge bosoms heaved under
her gown. "The old fool wanted to dice over our marriage. I ask you, Tony,
why on earth would I marry again at my age? I prefer my parties and my pugs."
Lady Hesketh had a pack of overindulged lap dogs. "Why don’t you take my
goddaughter instead? Her Mama is indisposed so I said I'd stand in her stead."
She turned her head and waved toward one of the long casement windows that
lined the walls of the ballroom.
"Susi?
Come over
here. Sentern is to escort you to supper."

A strange tingle spread through Tony. His skin
itched and he turned his head to watch the lady who appeared from behind the
curtain and walked slowly toward them. He'd recognize that hair anywhere.

"Susi?"

"Lady Susanna Campion.
My
goddaughter.
Of course she came out whilst you were gallivanting."

 
Tony wouldn't
call his travels gallivanting, but he let it go. He couldn't take his eyes off
the lady who curtsied and gave him a very speaking look.

"It will be my pleasure," he said.

If the look Susanna gave him could kill, his Mama would
be hunting out her blacks and choosing funeral meats.

"You promised," she said under her breath
as he steered her away from her beaming godmother and toward the supper room.

"This is neither dancing nor offering for you,"
Tony pointed out. He ignored her muttered words of, "No.
'Tis
much worse
than dancing and will be seen as you having intentions."
She may be
correct, but if he ignored it, so should she.

"And you would prefer I embarrass your
godmother, for whom I may say I have the highest regard, and you?" he
asked in an undertone as he gave a brief bow to a scowling matron. "Thus making
you a laughing stock? I hope I am too much of a gentleman."

"Oh glory, I never thought of it like that,"
she said in an undertone of her own. "And let's get away before Lady Memscott
foists Penelope on us. I swear if I'm told once more how sad it is that I
haven't taken, I'll take
her
.
By the neck.
Now that would cause a scandal. She may have
been married at seventeen, but to an aged lothario who did her a service by
dying after only a year of marriage. Do you think she bored him to death? Her
only thoughts are gowns and bonnets. Oh, and how sad it is I haven't taken. I
should have made it two worms down her back when we were at school together,
not just one."

He smothered his laugh, and with a wink, bent to
kiss the back of Susanna's hand. "Let's give the miserable old tabby and
her catty daughter something else to gossip about." He ignored the
outraged gasp from Lady Memscott, and pondered the way his cock stirred when
Susanna giggled.

"She doesn't need ammunition. If she can't find
gossip she makes it up. And as I've sunk so low in her estimation it would need
a very long rope to pull me up, I don't care."

The thought of rope and Susanna tweaked his prick
again. Tony made a mental note to examine his feelings regarding her and his
preferences when he was alone. Now would not be the time for a rampant staff
and a need for release. His evening breeches were snugly made to lovingly
caress every curve of his body. An erection would show. Tony might get
impatient with the niceties of the Ton but polite society was just that: polite.
Sporting a long, hard staff didn't conform.

"Why have you blotted your copy book?" he
asked as they left the ballroom and walked past his beaming Mama into a long
and strangely deserted corridor. Her look of smug satisfaction sent warning
bells ringing. "And my Mama looks like the cat
who
has just licked out the cream jug." That thought, of licking and cream was
yet another one to stir him.
I'm going to
have to take myself in hand before long if I can't stop reading sex into every
blasted word or thought.
But her cream on my tongue…
He brought his thoughts under control. He hardly knew the girl, so why was he
reacting to her in such a way?

"Oh, because I never seem to
care if I don't dance, or if she tries to put me down.
I've never worried
when Penelope gets up to her catty tricks, and I'm happy with my lot. Or I am
as long as I'm not hustled into a marriage of convenience. Not that she knows
that, of course. She just sees me as someone who didn’t take and feels sorry
for me."

Susanna stopped walking and turned toward him. Her
breasts, scarcely covered under her cream silks, brushed his chest. As she made
no reference to it and seemed oblivious to her nipples straining the cloth,
Tony decided he would ignore the fact. Or try to. It was difficult when her
scent surrounded him, and encouraged his body to misbehave. In his imagination
he could see her stretched out on the bed, arms bound, legs spread wide and her
denuded cunt bared to his view as he oh so slowly created patterns in wax on
her alabaster skin.